Debroy will be missed for his scholarship, humour: Jairam Ramesh

New Delhi: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday paid rich tributes to Dr Bibek Debroy, Chairman of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM), who passed away at age 69 on Friday.

Highlighting that Debroy left his mark on almost all institutions he worked with, Ramesh wrote on his social media handle X, “He will be missed for his scholarship as well for his dry sense of humour.”

“A man of unusually wide-ranging interests, Bibek Debroy was first and foremost a fine theoretical and empirical economist who worked and wrote on various aspects of the Indian economy,” said the Congress leader.

Ramesh also praised Debroy’s special skill for lucid exposition, in a manner that would make laypersons easily understand complex economic issues. “Over the years, he has had numerous institutional affiliations and he left his mark everywhere,” he said.

Bibek was also a prolific, and always thought-provoking, commentator in the media on public issues going well beyond economics, he added.

More than that, he will be remembered as a genuine Sanskritist of great erudition. His translations were many and included the Mahabharata in ten volumes, the Ramayana in three volumes, and the Bhagavata Purana in three volumes, Ramesh said.

“He had also translated the Bhagavad Gita and the Harivamsha. His translations of some important late 19th-century essays in Bengali are also noteworthy. Coincidentally, I happened to be reading just a few days back his translation of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's striking 1879 essay titled ‘Samya’ (Equality),” Ramesh posted on X social media platform.

Recalling his long association with the economist, the Congress leader said, “I had known him well for almost four decades and we would have conversations on all sorts of subjects. Recently, I had sent him two books which I knew he would relish -- one on the importance of Prakrit in pre-modern India, and another on the literary life of Yagnavalkya.”

Earlier, paying tributes to Debroy, PM Modi said that he has “left an indelible mark on India’s intellectual landscape.”

"Dr Debroy was a towering scholar, well-versed in diverse domains like economics, history, culture, politics, spirituality and more. Through his works, he left an indelible mark on India’s intellectual landscape. Beyond his contributions to public policy, he enjoyed working on our ancient texts, making them accessible to the youth,” the Prime Minister posted on X.

A Padma Shri awardee, Debroy also served as the Chancellor of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune.

The top economist was also a member of NITI Aayog from its inception in January 2015 till June 2019. He wrote several books, articles and was also a consulting/contributing editor with several newspapers.